Demographic and Social Structure and the Labor Market in Eastern Poland in the Light of Statistics. Selected issues.

Abstract

The study, based on publications and online CSO resources, attempts to analyze the current demographic structure, and selected labor market elements characteristic for a separate, closed area known as Polish and Eastern Europe. It is composed of five provinces, four of them: Lubelszczyzna, Podlasie, Subcarpathian and Świetokrzyskie administratively belonging to the Eastern Region and the fifth one - Warmia and Mazury, which is an administrative unit of the Northern Region. These regions constituting a third of the country’s area, and being home to the fifth part of the whole Polish population, are among the most marginalized areas of the country in terms of spatial, economic and social aspects. The analysis found that during the observation period, the Polish eastern provinces, both the availability of space and the structure of the population by age (inter alia resulting in the highest demographic dependency ratio in the country), as well as the employment structure (high share of employed in the agriculture, low share of those employed in services), or both unemployment rates, do not present an optimistic outlook. They all constitute a considerable threat to the state’s regional policy guidelines, all in favor of a trade-promotion polarization and diffusion model, favoring the so-called ‘locomotives of growth’, the richest provinces, which means further marginalization of the most vulnerable regions.